Milestones

Merry Christmas, everyone!

After 4 days of constant choir rehearsals and 3 services, we spent today at home just hanging out and getting ready for our trip to Portland tomorrow.

It's been a year of big milestones for my friends and family. In November, Eric had his 40th birthday, which we were sad to miss out on. We'll get to see him and Rusty in just a couple of days, though, as they're coming up to Portland as well.

Darcy had a baby on Dec. 18, a healthy boy named Benjamin Neal Lewellen. It sounds like she, David and little Ben are doing fabulously at home now.

On Dec. 20 Paul turned 50. He didn't want a big party, so I baked him his favorite oatmeal raisin cookies, which he loves more than any cake, and took him out for a nice dinner. I wrote out a list for him called 50 Things I Love About You. I could think of 35 separate things pretty quickly, but those last 15 took a bit more effort.

Just last Friday I finally heard from Dietrich, whom I haven't seen for 5 years. He just got married on the 15th, and he and his wife Lisa are in Portland right now. We've known each other for over 30 years, so it will be great to see them when we're out there. He emailed me a couple of pics from their wedding:

Back From Under a Rock

I have fallen off the face of the earth for the past 4 months--sorry about that! I just got out of the habit of blogging. I kept a (pen and paper) travel journal during the entire Europe trip. (And took a lot of pictures. )I know how quickly memories fade and change and wanted to capture everything as it happened. I am a slow writer, and it sometimes took me 2 hours a day just to keep up. The thought of migrating even part of it over here just seemed overwhelming with school starting 2 days after we got back.

Oh yeah, school. At first a bit of a shock after a 20-year break from studying anything, I soon got in the groove as my semi-dormant nerd tendencies took over and I became the class smartypants in all 3 of my classes. Most of you with whom I've kept in touch know that I decided to postpone College Algebra until the summer, when I have time to take it with a live human being instead of online. I got hopelessly behind the first week (due to computer technical difficulties) and dropped it.

Everything else, though, I found very engaging, even the potentially boring Introduction to Business. I took my books with me to my job at Case so I could do homework during my 2-hour break there. Don't believe anybody who tells you community colleges give easy A's. I actually worked my butt off, sometimes working on the computer until 1 am (though I have to say less than perfect time management skills have something to do with that).

All of my classes were in subjects I knew next to nothing about, so I couldn't coast much on previous knowledge. I now know all the material in two 500-page textbooks and I've learned how to use Word, Excel, Access and PowerPoint. I set a high goal for myself, to ace everything, and got mid- to high-nineties on most of my exams. My last final was Dec. 19th. Tonight, via the MyTri-CSpace site, I learned officially that I got straight A's in everything. It's all the sweeter because I had to work hard for it.